December 8, 2020

Make your own chicken liver pate at home in the crock pot

The week of Thanksgiving I planned on making a root vegetable stew to get in the cozy autumn mood, and decided on chicken livers as the meat. I figured it wouldn't be too different from beef heart stew, or fried beef liver & onions, or fried chicken hearts.

But in a Bob Ross turn of events, a happy little accident resulted -- liver in more of a pate consistency, totally broken down in structure after only stirring it around with a spoon. I did expect it to be falling-apart after 6 hours in the crock pot (what strivers have re-branded as a "slow cooker"). Just didn't think it would be so spreadable.

Given how expensive liver products are, though, I was only too happy to stumble upon the process for making your own at home.

The recipes for liver pate include a bunch of butter mixed in afterward, so this is more like a liver spread or liver salad. No pork, ham, bacon, or other meat either, unlike a proper pate or liverwurst.

Still, I prefer a variety of textures, and some separation of tastes to play off of each other, rather than a homogeneous mash. So if I wanted butter and bacon in the mix, I'd make the liver spread the same way, then slather some butter onto the toast before the spread, and top it off with a few slices of bacon. But if you like the all-in-one pate form, there are plenty of recipes for that as well.

If you're like me and were not raised on liver, its distinctive taste will be too bold and rich by itself, so I included some astringent vegetables like parsnip and celery to cut through the liver-y taste, as well as coating the top of the toast slices with yellow mustard. You could stuff this spread into half-sliced peppers, too -- anything crisp and acidic.

Ever since I discovered the low-carb / paleo / keto thing about 10 years ago, I've always made sure to include liver in my diet. There's no better source for vitamin A, since that's the organ where it's stored. It's so concentrated, you only need a medium slice of liverwurst a day to get all the retinol your body needs.

Now I can finally prepare it at home, without having to regularly eat fried beef liver & onions. Don't know why I never bothered looking up a recipe for pate, guess I always assumed it was a big laborious ordeal because of how expensive it is. But nope! It couldn't be simpler.

It will make a huge amount, though, more than you can consume before it starts to spoil after a week or so. (Speaking of which, store in the fridge with an airtight seal around the entire surface of the mass, whether plastic wrap, aluminum foil, etc.) The day before Thanksgiving, I filled a small casserole dish to the brim and gave it to the elderly woman I know next door -- and I still had enough to last about 10 days, with heaping servings every day.

Since this was the first time I made it, and on accident at that, what's below is more of a report of what I did, than a tried and true recipe, in case you want to keep it as simple as I did.

Normally I'd make the base out of a can of diced tomatoes, watered down, then a variety of herbs and spices mixed in. But I was experimenting with sauces out of the jar at the time. And if I'd known I'd be making a spread for toast, I would've minimized carbs by cutting out the rice, which was intended for a stew.

* * *


Ingredients:

1.25 lb tub of chicken livers

1 jar tikka masala sauce

Water to fill the sauce jar

1/2 medium turnip

1/2 medium parsnip

1/2 medium yellow onion

2 stalks celery

1/8 to 1/4 lb white rice (did not measure exactly)

Toast, crackers, or pepper halves for serving


Steps:

Empty sauce into crock pot, watered down with enough water to fill jar

Dice the turnip, parsnip, onion, celery, and add to the pot

Add rice to the pot

Rinse off the livers in a colander, then add them to the pot

Stir everything well

Cook on low for 6 hours

Slice livers apart and stir all around until a paste forms

Let cool for 30 min

Transfer mixture to Pyrex dish (or other hot-to-cold-to-hot dish)

Refrigerate overnight, with mixture covered in plastic wrap or foil

Serve on toast, crackers, pepper halves, etc., with yellow mustard

6 comments:

  1. Excellent! Not only vitamin A, but also a tremendous source of B6 and B12. The vilification of liver from big pharma’s voodoo cult makes you feel like a rebel before even considering the nutritional value.

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  2. Maybe it was all the B12 that made me laugh uncontrollably after eating a whole bowl of the pate right out of the crock pot. I still thought about treating it as a stew, and didn't let it refrigerate or only have a portion that could be spread on toast.

    Wow. Not just the strength of the liver-y taste, but something went right to my head, and I had a gut-bursting bout of laughter for a good couple minutes. Reminded me of those big pharma ads about pseudobulbar affect or whatever it's called when you laugh uncontrollably.

    (inb4 joker memes)

    But that didn't happen when I let it set in the fridge, and only eat enough to make a sandwich out of. Could've just been the dosage.

    Similar to the effect of eating raw egg yolks (not the whites, they have an anti-nutrient when raw). You get this pleasant mellow blissful sensation where your brain feels like it's just drifting down a lazy river ride basking in the sunshine. Only with the freshly cooked liver, it was that effect times 100.

    B12 is the most likely common factor there.

    No wonder vegans are so miserable.

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  3. That brings up something bigger about cerebral people being vegans and drug users, while corporeal people are more carnivorous and do not require drugs to feel better or have fun.

    Corporeal people relish rich satiating food, which is packed with the stuff that makes your brain feel good as well as the rest of your body. You're already in a good headspace naturally -- you don't need to intervene with artificial drugs, supplements, etc.

    Cerebral people, being awkward in their own bodies or being disgusted by their own bodies, do not enjoy rich satiating meals packed with animal products, fat, etc. It's repulsive to them, not just a "to each their own" neutral disagreement.

    That dietary disorder leads to mental disorders, as they're depriving themselves of so many nutrients that affect the brain (as well as the body).

    How to treat their disorders? Not naturally with healthy food, but therefore with artificial substances like drugs -- psychiatric meds, hard drugs, alcoholism, etc. None of those are satiating and cathartic like fatty French food. They always leave you wanting more, depending on them for regular hits to maintain the fragile stability of their moods.

    They also tend to be much more carboholic snackers (and multi-cup coffee drinkers), for the same reasons. Sugar and starch are like drugs to make them feel positive for a brief while. Plus this rush of energy comes without having to eat those repulsive fatty animal products.

    Other connections, fwiw:

    - Leftists are more cerebral, hence more vegan, drug-using, and mentally disordered. Right-wingers are more corporeal, more carnivorous, uninterested in drugs, and mentally normal.

    - At root, there's probably selection for childlike traits in environments where the cerebral phenotype flourishes. Childlike wonder ("why? why? why?"). Longer-lasting neural plasticity, rather than hardening into final shape early on. Sure enough, "adult" cerebrals have the eating preferences of small children -- boo fat / organs / animals, yay sugar and starch.

    Lot more to say about these topics. Just going in all directions for now since I haven't food-posted in years.

    (Is that a sign of the return of the warm-up and manic phases of the excitement cycle? Last craze for low-carb and paleo began with the South Beach Diet in the mid-late 2000s, lasting through around 2014 with the whole Naked and Afraid craze. Part of my blogging history of that time was the low-carb / paleo diet.

    Now that we're coming out of our refractory-phase shells of the late 2010s, it's time to look good and feel good as we interact with others again, especially the opposite sex.)

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  4. Not to neglect that timeless topic: I'll bet boob people are more vegan than butt people, and more drug-using (both hard drugs and psych meds).

    That goes for guys and girls -- guys who are into boobs more than butts, and girls with more in front than around back, should fit the cerebral / vegan / drug-using / mentally disordered phenotype.

    Fellas, if you're looking for a gf without cerebral neuroses, get one with a dump truck rather than a milk truck, who will enjoy making and eating rich animal-product meals that keep her moods normal (by female standards).

    You'll only have to set boundaries about baking too much (high-carb), which culinary women sometimes go overboard with. At least steer her toward incorporating as much fatty animal products into her baking.

    Plus, the opportunities for double-entendre compliments:

    "Mmm, there's nothing demi about your brioche buns..."

    And to the cerebral women, force yourself to eat more fatty animal products, including liver. You're already paying through the nose for retinol skin care, liver is jam-packed with retinol. Only it will be going to all of your epithelial cells, not just the area of skin you apply a wrinkle cream on.

    Cerebral / skinny / boob / fat-hating women love to talk about starving themselves as though it's a sacrifice, but they love doing it! What would be a sacrifice and display of fortitude would be making yourself eat some liver every day, get fatty cuts of meat, and so on and so forth.

    You can still maintain your charmingly chaotic scatterbrained cerebral vibes, while dialing down the excess levels to make yourself more appealing to everyone.

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  5. Really enjoy reading your thoughts on cerebral vs corporeal types, and think you’re right on the money.

    The subjective politics of “healthy eating” is made so annoyingly complicated, it really is quite straight forward. IMO the hardest part of nutrition is sourcing followed by preparation. Grass fed beef is easy to get, but who out there knows how toxic vegetable/seed oils are? Rather than completely losing ground (eg fastfood) you take one step forward and two back when using garbage oils to cook everything.

    I’m curious if there’s a straight-forward method to knowing which restaurant kitchens use good fats to prep meals and which ones opt for the cheap pseudo-food like canola, cottonseed, grapeseed oils.

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  6. You do a disservice to liver by glossing over its other essential nutrients: the fat-soluble vitamin D and K2, which are generally absent from most Americans' diets, as opposed to vitamin A. I highly recommend anyone who finds our patron's recipe or these comments interesting to read Perfect Health Diet by Jaminet and Jaminet, which is in my opinion the best single-source treatment of correct nutrition. Turns out the healthiest diet is legitimately better-tasting/-satiating than alternatives and fairly uncomplicated. (Other excellent resources are westonaprice.org and marksdailyapple.com )

    I think your B12 hypothesis above is probably right. B12 is actually difficult to absorb from food unless you're already very healthy, so most people who study it conclude that you might be better off supplementing high doses sublingually/buccally, even if you eat well. See: https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of-nutrition/vitamin-b12-vital-nutrient-for-good-health/

    Do you have any ideas what causes some people to be "cerebral" versus "corporeal"? I believe you've accurately described something I've discovered in the last two years: extremely widespread, chronic, low-level mercury poisoning. I learned about this from researching my own mysterious chronic health problems (whence my know-how above) until I stumbled across Dr. Andy Cutler's chelation protocol that he discovered, refined, and popularized with his first book Amalgam Illness in 1999. (The second is The Mercury Detoxification Manual, published last year.)

    We know it is widespread because we know how fast mercury can be excreted from the body under the best circumstances and genetics, and the biggest sources of exposure (for almost everyone) are ubiquitous: mercury amalgam dental fillings, which are half mercury by weight and continuously evaporate minute amounts that the unfortunate patient inhales over the rest of their lives; and childhood and flu vaccines, which dramatically increased in number, dosage, and cumulative thimerosal content in 1986 (see: https://bolenreport.com/why-millennials-might-be-different-from-other-generations/ ).

    Low-level Hg poisoning presents completely differently from fatal Hg poisoning, and to summarize a huge amount of deeply fascinating research spread across empirical biochemistry, theoretical biochemistry, and (perhaps tens of) thousands of successful chelation anecdotes, it is probably responsible for almost all modern autoimmune disorders, including "incurable" degenerative neurological conditions, and many other kinds of common conditions thought not to be autoimmune, like type 2 diabetes mellitus; most mental illnesses, both frank—like ADHD, bipolar disorder, BPD, various eating disorders, OCD, Asperger's/the cognitive aspects of autism, schizophrenia, possibly a factor in various queer identities—and subtle, which manifests in many, many different ways, including black and white thinking, impaired empathy, nerdy/geeky/antisocial behaviors, low-level background anxiety, paranoia, thoughts or hostility, extreme analytical modes of thinking dominating, labile emotions, hysterics, imagined hostility from others, alienation from other people, derealization, depersonalization, narcissism, maybe sociopathy, obsessive tendencies, veganism, being a soyboy, stimuli sensitivity that often results in a deep affinity and capacity for art/design/music/aesthetics, the cause behind modern society's (since 1986 especially) mass psychosis, and way too much else to try and list here, and I'm wondering—the cerebral archetype as well? (I have a pet theory that the subtle kind may be a necessary condition for leftism.)

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